$767K cash seized from head shop owner home

Published 12:29 pm Tuesday, January 28, 2014

MINNEAPOLIS — Authorities seizing assets of a convicted Duluth head shop owner found more than $750,000 in cash hidden in a bathroom at his home, according to federal court papers filed Monday.

Law enforcement officers found $767,346 in currency, most of it wrapped in plastic and “hidden in a small space concealed behind what appeared to be a cabinet in the lower level bathroom” when they searched the Superior, Wis., home of Last Place On Earth owner Jim Carlson last month, the documents said.

Agents found $5,000 in a “Buddha-type decorative item” on a living room shelf, $6,500 in a dining room hutch and $302 tucked between the master bed mattress and bedrail, the filing said.

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Federal prosecutors are seeking to recover profits from Carlson, who was convicted in October on 51 counts in a synthetic drug case. Carlson is in jail awaiting sentencing.

Defense attorney Randall Tigue told The Associated Press on Monday that the probable cause listed on the search warrant “was dubious at best.”

Carlson’s girlfriend Lava Haugen, also convicted in the case, still lives at the house that agents searched on Dec. 18.

An Internal Revenue Service agent calculated the now-closed head shop generated $6.5 million in proceeds from selling the illegal substances.